Fyre Festival Reportedly Under FBI Investigation for Fraud

Earlier this month, Vice News reported on audio obtained from a meeting at Fyre Media, in which Billy McFarland, founder of the now infamous, and infamously disastrous, Fyre Festival, addresses an employee’s concerns about rumors of an FBI investigation. “That’s really more of an individual thing,” McFarland replied at the time. According to The New York Times, however, that concern is about to become a whole lot more widespread. In an article published on Sunday entitled “In Wreckage of the Fyre Festival, Fury, Lawsuits and an Inquiry,” the Times reports that a criminal investigation has begun into “possible mail, wire and securities fraud” allegedly committed by Fyre Media with regards to the festival. Writes the Times, “The investigation is being conducted by the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York and the F.B.I.; it is being overseen by a prosecutor assigned to the complex frauds and cybercrime unit.” The FBI declined to comment on the story.

That said, if the FBI is in fact interested in finding out what exactly went down in the Bahamas last month, it joins the plaintiffs in at least seven lawsuits thathave been filed against Fyre, McFarland, and McFarland’s collaborator Ja Rule since April 28, the day festivalgoers arrived in Great Exuma only to discover that the luxury getaway they had been promised was actually a chaotic beach lacking fully-assembled shelters and, according to a lawsuit filed by event staffing organization National Event Services, plagued by “bug infestation, bloodstained mattresses, and no air conditioning.”